We found Torchwood 4!
by Shadowxwolf
Summary: Two teenagers find something strange happening at their school, and when they investigate, they nearly get killed. Apparently, their world is not so cosy after all, and when they join Torchwood Newcastle, the adventrues are only just beginning...
1. Something Fishy

This story is yet another one of my rabid plot bunnies - it just refuses to leave me alone. So, I wrote it down. This story is actually based (very loosely) on real events and real people. Those who know me will know exactly who they are.

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'I still say it's Gwen,' Anne intoned. She leaned back and let her long, dark hair fall over the back of the chair

'Nah way, Ianto,' Susan argued back.

'Gwen.'

'Ianto.'

'Gwen.'

'Ianto!

'Gwen!'

'Pizza!' Reese walked in at that point, carrying a stack of cardboard boxes in his formally dressed arms that were emitting an enticing aroma. It soon brought the rest of the team up from various jobs at their various different workstations. Susan immediately jumped up to help him with the boxes, and Anne sniggered softly and they both blushed. She quirked her mouth in an amused half-smile.

'The one thing you could have done to confirm my guilty suspicions,' she chortled. 'Don't worry, I won't tell nobody.' Susan absently wondered whether her co-worker had used a double negative for any particular reason. Anne was like that.

Michaela came bounding in, her blonde tresses bounding behind her like a wave, given a new lease of life and a hungry, dazzling smile at the smell of food.

'They arguing again?' the medical officer asked, as if she knew the answer already. Reese nodded in reply and she rolled her eyes.

'How's that alien coming, Mick?' Susan asked, as much to get off the embarrassing subject as anything.

'Don't get me started,' Michaela replied, flopping down into one of the squashy leather chairs of the conference room. She let out a resounding sigh to reiterate her point.

Torchwood 4, Newcastle, which lay over a hotspot in the Rift, was enjoying a peaceful lapse in alien activity. There had been precious little to worry about in over a week, and nobody was complaining about it. So, when not compiling paperwork or cataloguing alien artefacts, the team had taken to watching the BBC's version of the secret organisation. They had been hooked since the first episode, despite the blaring inconsistencies. For one thing, Torchwood London was still very much up and running, though it was generally thought that the boss had had a few words with the famed Russell T. Davies to make it seem otherwise. And of course, there was the inevitable argument over who would make a better partner for Jack – Gwen or Ianto. Most of the team didn't bother too much, but Anne and Susan were always bickering about it when other topics of conversation had dried up. Before Reese had walked in, they had been watching 'Something Borrowed'.

'You should have seen your face!' Susan giggled, taking a bite of Hawaiian. 'You looked like you were dying!'

'You can talk,' Anne shot back. 'You looked asphyxiated until it turned out to be the alien. They were so _close!_ And I get more points for using more advanced vocabulary,' she added.

At that moment the boss sauntered in fresh from a weevil hunt, throwing his jacket neatly onto the back of his chair.

'Hey! Who stole my jalapeño pizza?' he cried in mock outrage.

'Guilty,' Anne admitted, raising her hand. James looked at her as if to say 'I should have known'.

'I heard raised voices,' he said instead. 'Were these two arguing again?'

'Yup.' James laughed easily, putting his feet up on the table as he tucked into his slice. Susan and Reese looked a bit put out about this, but said nothing. After all, James was the boss, and what he said, went.

'I don't see why this is such a big deal,' Michaela started. 'Jack and Ianto are cute together, end of.'

But Anne wouldn't let that lie. 'I'll agree with you on that, but Jack and Gwen have a connection that goes so much deeper than that.' There were disbelieving noises erupting from around the table and she looked instantly sullen. 'You've got no empathy, that's your problem,' she snapped at Susan. 'And you're just being difficult.' Michaela raised her eyebrows. Reese wisely stayed out of the conversation, and James looked on with slight amusement. Watching Anne try and fend off attacks from two sides was extremely funny. He decided to come to her rescue.

'Personally, I think Jack and Gwen are going to end up together. All you have to do is see the way he looks at her to realise that,' he said. Anne smiled warmly at him, and smugly at the others as if to point out that James' opinion mattered more than theirs, because he was the boss. They rolled their eyes. James _always _sided with Anne.

'We agree on one point though, right?'

'Gwen can sometimes be a complete bitch?'

'Bingo. Kinda like someone around here,' Susan muttered devilishly, looking pointedly at Anne. The weapons expert looked shocked.

'Hey, I am _not _a bitch!' she protested. 'I just get. . .irrationally violent sometimes.'

The whole room exploded with laughter, and even cool, collected James was choking slightly on his pizza. Anne grinned sheepishly at her co-workers.

'Remember when it used to be quiet around here?' James reminisced fondly to nobody in particular when the commotion had died down. 'Whatever happened to change all that?'

'You hired us, remember?' Anne interjected wryly.

'How could I forget?' His eyes twinkled in her direction, his gaze lingering for just long enough to make her uncomfortable.

She certainly wouldn't forget her first meeting with Torchwood, even though they had tried to erase it from her memory. It had been a grey day in autumn almost three years ago now, when curiosity had gotten the better of two upper sixth formers and set in motion stones that were still rolling and colliding with ever bigger boulders.

The two teenagers had taken a walk because they were, or course bored, and were trying to avoid such things as homework and the teachers they should have handed the homework to. It was halfway through their A2 course, and, as with GCSEs two years earlier, they simply couldn't be arsed anymore. So, they had sat on a bench behind the school, talking about their lack of social lives and how much life sucked in general. Nothing exciting ever happened.

That was when they had first heard the noise.

'What the hell?' Anne quizzed. It was a strange sort of buzzing and clicking, like a badly tuned radio. She got up and tried to trace it, Susan following, just as curious, though more eloquently so. They followed the sound to the corner of one of the buildings. It had gotten louder and weirder the closer they had come, and now were having a silent shoving fight as to which one of them would actually look first.

Anne won, or lost, depending on how you looked at it. She peeked quickly round the corner, every muscle taut, ready to duck back if some projectile came whizzing at her head. But it was only a teacher, the geography teacher, speaking into a mobile in some funny language. But it wasn't really a mobile phone. At least, not one that Anne had ever seen.

'Take a look,' she whispered. 'It's Mrs. Woods. What's that she's holding?'

Susan looked. 'A mobile?' she guessed sarcastically.

'No,' her friend insisted. 'Look how she's holding it. And there's some sort of orange light at the top.' It was definitely weird. Susan didn't seem to think so.

'So? It's probably a new model or something. You read way too much into things.'

The clicking conversation had stopped. Maybe their hissed comments had become a little too loud. But no. When Anne chanced another glance, their teacher had pulled a piece of paper with the face of a child on it – a student of the school, she realised, and seemed to be scanning it into the device. _Sending it to whoever's on the other end._ But why? And why come out to the back of the school, where nobody ever came, to do it? Something struck Anne as fishy, and it wasn't the smell. Mrs. Woods had always whiffed slightly of kippers.

'What do you think she was doing?' she asked for the fifth time that afternoon. Susan was having none of it.

'Will you shut up about that!' she snapped. 'Yes, it was weird, happy? Do I think there's something weird going on? No. Drop it.' And she wouldn't listen to anything her friend said for the rest of the day, although it still worried at Anne's brain like an itch at the back of the throat.

She just wouldn't let it alone, and it wouldn't let her alone. Determination toward the point of obsession was a character flaw of hers, and once an idea had probed itself into her mind, there was no dislodging it for several weeks. She would hardly eat, sleep, or think about anything else until whatever it was, was satisfied.

That night, staring blankly at the computer screen, a sudden urge took hold of Anne, and she searched Google long into the night, looking for something, anything, that might prove her right. Dark rings lined her eyes the next morning, but the triumphant look that blazed within them eradicated any zombie look she might have had. She thrust her findings under Susan's nose and told her to read.

'These are missing kids' reports,' she stated. Anne nodded. 'So? This hasn't got anything to do with what we saw yesterday, is it? Because if it is, you are a) a freak, and b) wasting my time.'

'No, just look,' Anne insisted. 'All of these kids have gone missing within the last three years, right? Exactly the same time that Mrs. Woods has been at this school.'

'Anne, none of these kids went to our school.'

'Yes they did, they just all transferred or left before they went missing,' Anne replied, trying to hide her eagerness. Her friend still looked sceptical.

'Children go missing all the time,' she pointed out.

'Not like these ones; they were there one minute and poof! Gone the next. I'm telling you, it has something to do with her.'

'And I'm telling you, you're insane. Leave me alone.' Anne scowled and showed her trump card. It was a printout of a poster, another missing person, and a clipping from a newspaper. Susan reluctantly took it, just to shut her up. Her eyes grew wider as she read it. '_Jocelyn Woods, 35, is still missing after torrential storms last Friday. The hiker disappeared while walking along the banks of the river Thames, and police are calling for any witnesses to come forward. Sniffer dogs now involved.'_ Susan looked up. 'Coincidence,' she stated. 'It has to be. This proves nothing.'

'Oh really? You know, Jocelyn isn't a very common name, and they're exactly the same age, same date of birth and everything. And this was twelve years ago. Mrs. Woods looks exactly the same now as she did then. But she was. Never. Found.' Anne drove her point home by stabbing the picture.

Susan relented, but still pointed out that, realistically, there was no evidence linking their geography teacher with the missing people on the police database. Anne said she had a plan to find some. That made Susan worried.

That plan unfolded during their geography lesson that afternoon. Each student could take on their own project as coursework, although they had to run the idea past their teacher first. Anne asked if she could look at human migration in MEDCs influenced by jobs, and Mrs Woods saw no problem with that. Anne then replied she would start with a survey of where people's previous jobs had been, starting with the teachers. Susan could almost see where this was going. Anne had very strange logic though, so she didn't bother trying to follow.

'Could I please ask where your jobs were in the last ten years, Mrs. Woods? Just so I can start the survey now.'

'Your information won't be very accurate,' the teacher frowned, but told her the information anyway. Anne smirked craftily at her friend.

Later, in the same lesson, Mrs Woods had to go out of the room for something, and chatter sprang up immediately. Susan leaned over to whisper at her friend.

'She was looking at us all through that,' she whispered.

'Of course. She knows we know something, and because we know she's worried that we know she knows we know something, it means it's something she doesn't want us to know about.'

'Was all that necessary?' Susan asked impatiently.

'No, I'm just in a funny mood today,' was the reply. Anne returned to her work, labouring diligently on question three until Susan couldn't stand it anymore.

'Ok.'

'What?'

'Why do you need to know where she worked?'

'Missing kids. If we find a correlation between where she's been and the number of missing kids, we'll know we're on to something,' Anne explained.

'And then, if, you happen to find something?'

'We follow her,' came the determined reply.

In retrospect, Susan wished she had stayed well away from this hare-brained scheme. Somehow, Anne had managed to convince her to skip work that weekend and spend it instead following their geography teacher home and staking out her house in Anne's cramped blue Renault Clio. There had indeed been a correlation between Mrs Woods' previous job locations and children gone missing without a trace. When asked how Anne had come by this information, she had mumbled something about hacking into her father's computer. Such a model daughter, Susan thought to herself. Of course, her friend's excuse was that Susan had taught her how to hack into computers; it was true, but totally irrelevant to the argument.

Mrs. Woods had done nothing all day, and it was getting dark. Even Anne's unwavering enthusiasm was wavering; they were both dozing off at random moments and jolting awake seconds later.

Suddenly the mood changed. Mrs Woods' 4x4 was leaving the drive and heading off into the twilight. Anne hastily started the engine.

'This is a bad idea. You don't even have a licence,' Susan pointed out.

'Oh, stop being such a bloody pessimist. All we have to do is not drive too fast, and nobody'll notice.' As they were driving past the house, Susan glanced out of the window.

'Was that black SUV always there?' she asked. But her friend wasn't listening. She was too busy trying not to lose the Nissan off-roader in front of them.

And the geography teacher was making it difficult. After cruising along the motorway for half an hour, the Nissan turned off onto a country road where there were only street lights for about half a mile. The two teenagers were plunged into darkness as they tried to follow the silver car in front of them, Anne glancing nervously every so often at the shadow that seemed to be shadowing _them._

It was almost as if she were going along deliberately twisting roads, trying to shake them off. So Anne, with a great yelp of horror from her travelling companion, switched off the headlights and dropped back a little way. She didn't slow down at all though.

'You know, the way you're finding no problem breaking laws is really starting to scare me,' Susan commented.

'Quiet,' was all Anne said in reply, her voice tight with some unidentifiable emotion. Possibly fear.

Sleep deprivation was getting the better of Anne's reflexes, but she doggedly gripped the steering wheel as the silver Nissan turned onto a recycling yard, brightly lit, even at this desolate time of night. The Clio parked in the shadows a little way off, and Anne and Susan got out, stealing through the shrubs to get a better view of whatever was going on, all traces of tiredness gone and every nerve on high alert.

Mrs Woods was glancing around warily, and the two teenagers ducked reflexively. Two robed figures were now striding, no, gliding out of the shadows onto the brilliantly lit gravel. A few hissing clicks were exchanged between the things and Mrs Woods, before one of the creatures said with a definite reluctance in its spitting voice 'Very well, we will ssspeak in the human language iff you find it less difficult.' The accent was strange, and reminded Anne of the beetles in the tunnel in that Indiana Jones movie. The thought sent a shiver crawling up her spine.

'I gave you the picture of the next one. You can get her any time you want,' Mrs Woods was saying. 'Where's my money?'

Susan and Anne glanced at each other.

'Ah, yesss, about your payment,' one of the creatures said. 'Unffortunately, part off your contract wasss to keep thisss operation sssecret, and I am affraid that you have ffailed to do ssso.'

'What? Oh you mean those kids? Yeah they were poking around, but I lost them ages ago.' The alien (because what else could it be?) was silent, as if contemplating the human before it, and Anne felt a sense of foreboding stirring in her gut. An instinct to run gripped her, to just get in the car and drive as far and as fast as possible, but before she could act on it, a cold, clammy, blistered hand reeking of rotten fish grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms at her sides.

She kicked and squirmed and lashed out savagely in any way she could. She called Susan's name, muffled through the fetid hand, but straining her eyes left she could see her friend in a similar state, pinioned by one of the aliens.

They were shoved roughly down in front of the geography teacher, who stared at them with wild eyes, glancing horrified between her two students and the alien leader.

'You sssee?' it hissed. 'You did not cover your tracksss well. I would even go ssso ffar asss to sssay you are losssing your capability ffor your duty.' It said this last bit delicately, as though savouring the reaction it would get from the words.

Mrs Woods started, and started pleading, grabbing hold of the front of the creature's robes.

'No, please!' she sobbed. 'You can't do this! If they die, nobody will know! Please!'

It stepped back, hissing disgustedly. 'You have outlasssted your ussse,' it said coldly.

What happened next sent both Anne and Susan numb. A great, clawed hand appeared from the depths of the thing's robes and swiped at the teacher's throat. Blood spattered everywhere, including over them. It splashed over them in hot, thick drops, and they stared at the twitching corpse for a full thirty seconds before realisation kicked in. They panicked, thrashing wildly and screaming through the hands that held them in a grip like steel. It was no good. Tears were trickling down Susan's cheeks and all Anne could think was _she's in this because of me. If she dies tonight it'll be my fault_.

The alien was speaking again. The chilling sound of its grating voice brought them both to a complete halt. This was the first time they could get a good look at it. The face was blotchy and grey and wrinkled like a mouldy apple, and stretched grotesquely. Its mouthparts clicked and opened horizontally like an insect's, and two bulbous eyes gleamed out from under its hood, shiny black and cruel.

'Unffortunately, I cannot allow you two to live beyond thisss night. You have ssseen too much.' The regret in its voice was almost real, but it obviously didn't feel so pained as to reconsider its verdict. It raised its now bloodied claws to strike again. And that was when the air exploded.


	2. Welcome To Torchwood Four

This chapter is mainly for NayClem, who promised me that if I didn't update today, she would kill me - and because she's a prop on my rugby team, I'm inclined to listen to her. Thankyou for telling people to come read this.

Please review this story, it'll make me happy!

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Susan couldn't remember screaming as the creature's great taloned fist sliced through the air towards her. The world became a blur thundering along at a snail's pace, every heartbeat lasting an eternity. Suddenly something crackled and pummelled the air. Someone was shouting something. The monster's chest was ripped and splattered open, thick black blood spurting everywhere. The hand that had gripped her so tightly fell away with a sharp tear in her flesh. The pain brought her back to reality.

Figures, three human figures, were sprinting over the unkempt gravel with guns levelled at the monsters. The one that had been holding her lay twitching on the ground, the nervous impulses still snapping through it despite the fact it was dead. The one that was going to kill them was snarling, doubled over by the bullet holes in its chest.

'Get down!' The man at the front of the rescuers barked. A hand tugged her downwards as another volley of shots rang out. The monster howled as pain tore through its ruined body, but hissed fiercely as one of the men came forward and put the gun to its head. The thing's brains exploded all over the ground.

Anne watched the whole thing as though detached from herself – morbid fascination had gripped her in the face of death, then surprise when the thing staggered back and the creature keeping hold of her slumped to the ground, dead. She saw the people who came rushing out of the darkness to put an end to those things. Partial comprehension enabled her to pull Susan to the floor before they were caught in the crossfire. When the monster's head was blown in half, and the minute fragments of greenish brain and black blood rained down, hissing, onto the gravel, she felt sick. Convulsions poured out acidic slime on the ground as she fought back revulsion.

Without a word the man who had shot the thing had bent down and was examining a wound on Susan's upper arm. The flesh around the gash was turning black, and Susan herself was shivering – whether with pain or shock, Anne couldn't tell.

'Mick!' the man barked. 'We need you!'

A tall blonde rushed over, elfin features frowning with worry. When she saw the wound close up she shook her head. 'It's no good, we'll have to take her in.' She had a soft Afrikaans lilt to her voice. Susan whimpered slightly as the woman prodded the bared flesh, and quickly sunk a syringe into her arm. 'That will do for now.'

Anne watched, stunned, as the man picked her friend up as though she was a feather and carried her away. Shaking herself, she jumped after him, unsteadily. 'Hey,' she called shakily. 'Hey!' The man had now reached the door of a big black SUV that was just oozing high-tech vibes. He turned, fixing the teenager with assessing hazel eyes. A brief flash of what could have been surprise and something else flickered in them, and grew instantly indifferent.

'Are you coming?' he asked.

'I –' Anne glanced back at the monsters and the pooling black fluid reflecting the searchlights of the site, then back at the tall man who had saved their lives. There wasn't really a choice. 'What about my car?' she asked.

'Reese will drive it.'

'Reese?' The man nodded towards the third member of the party, who was holding out his palm for Anne's car keys. She handed them over as if in a trance.

'Thankyou,' Reese smiled. The other man, the boss, Anne realised, motioned for her to climb into the car. The backseat was taken up by Susan and the blonde woman, so she went round the passenger seat and climbed in gingerly. The boss skidded away from the scene of carnage, into pitch blackness imposed by the bright lights of the recycling centre and the dark tint of the windows.

Now Anne got a good look at him: bronze coloured bangs framed a pale, unemotional face, his eyes staying firmly on the road. Looking down, Anne could see broad shoulders clothed in a battered leather jacket that looked as though it had been in a fair few skirmishes in its time. His build was athletic, toned, and there was an aura of distance about him, of detachment. He was like an observer on the world, she decided.

The only sound in that pitch blackness was Susan's occasional moans of pain creeping through whatever painkillers the woman was giving her. Silence was absolute.

'Are you all right?' the boss asked suddenly, glancing to his left. Anne looked up. His accent was hard to place – not northern, but definitely English; he must have travelled a great deal at some point.

'Hunh? Yeah, I s'pose,' she mumbled as reply.

'You're in shock,' he stated, eyes snapping back to the road.

Suddenly it was all too much. 'I don't get it,' she burst out. 'What _were_ those things?'

'Unpronouncables,' he replied immediately.

'What?'

'Aliens,' he clarified.

Anne's eyes went wide. 'Whoa! No way. No way! You're telling me those were aliens?'

'Yes.'

'As in, from outer space?'

'Yes.'

'Ah.' There was a pause. 'So, who are you then?'

For the first time, the boss showed emotion; the corner of his mouth quirked upwards. 'James. This is Michaela Bjornson, medical officer. The man we left at the site was Reese Smith, our language expert and the one who tidies up after us.' He turned to Anne. 'We're Torchwood.'

'Torchwood,' she repeated slowly. 'What happened to Susan?'

'The Unpronouncables' blood is corrosive,' Michaela explained. 'Some of it must have transferred into her blood.'

'What's going to happen to her?'

'We have to get her back to Base,' Michaela said shortly.

Lights stripped past as the SUV hurtled along deserted roads. The world outside dissolved into a dull haze of orange as Anne drifted in and out of wakefulness. She was tired, so tired, and all that had happened so far was threatening to swamp her. She vaguely recognised this stretch of road; it was the dual carriageway on the way north to Morpeth.

The SUV turned off just as a group of man-made mounds loomed up. Anne sat bolt upright; there hadn't been a road there from what she could remember.

'What was -?'

'Perception filter,' James said. 'You can't see it unless you know it's there.' They stopped outside an impressive looking door that looked as if it could withstand a small nuclear bomb. James led the way across while Anne helped the medic carry Susan. He typed in something on a keypad that seemed an actual part of the wall and the door rolled back to reveal a corridor that curved round slightly and led into an interesting light. 'Anne Prince, Susan Herald, welcome to Torchwood Four,' James said proudly when the corridor had opened out.

What lay in front of their eyes was a complex looking network of computer screens and strange objects, all humming quietly and looking very sophisticated. If Susan were conscious, she would be in heaven. She was brilliant with computers – she had been the one to teach her how to hack into her father's police computer in the first place. That seemed a long, long time ago now.

Michaela led the way down a side staircase into an adjoining room furnitured with a row of hospital beds and an operating table at the far end. Anne was disconcerted to see through a doorway a room that looked suspiciously full of cold storage units – a morgue.

Susan's body was convulsing now, and dark tendrils that were veins were slowly creeping outwards from the wound. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead. Michaela disappeared and came back a second later, carrying an assortment of items with collected, surgical grace.

'This is for you,' she said, handing Anne a small white pill.

'What is it?'

'Something to help with the shock. You take that, and let me do my job here, eh? Your friend will up and about in no time,' she assured. Anne, still numb, nodded and returned to the central hub. The ceiling tilted to a point about twenty metres above her head well lit with bright strip lights. It was easy to feel out of your depth in here. She leaned over the railing to hide the silent tears of shock and horror welling from her eyes. Mrs Woods had been killed, right before their eyes, and not by accident or even by human hands. Aliens. Aliens had killed their geography teacher.

A mug appeared at her elbow, along with a strong scent of coffee beans.

'No thanks,' she declined. 'I don't like coffee.'

'Suit yourself. It'll help with the shock though,' James said. He was looking at her again, as if assessing how much she could take. How much more could there be?

They stood together in silence for a minute or two, James' confident presence alone giving Anne solace.

'You said you were Torchwood,' Anne voiced suddenly. 'What is Torchwood?'

James smiled slightly. 'We're a secret organisation that monitors alien activity on Earth, and prevents their technology falling into the wrong hands. There's a hole in time and space sitting under Newcastle, and things fall through from time to time – most of the time, actually.'

'So that's why I've never heard of you,' Anne replied. 'I have to say though, it would have been anticlimactic if you'd just said you were gun-wielding stamp collectors or something.' She laughed feebly, the tears threatening to come again. 'You said this was Torchwood Four. Where are the other three?'

'Torchwood One is London, Canary Wharf actually. Torchwood Two is up in Glasgow, a very small office, Torchwood Three is in Cardiff. We're separate from them; I didn't like how they did things, so I erased our records from the main Torchwood server and went underground, quite literally.' He chuckled slightly as he looked around him.

'How did they do things?' Anne asked.

'They thought they were above everyone else – long story short, they didn't just take alien technology from the wrong hands, they _were _the wrong hands. Anyone who stood up to them or found out about the organisation was quietly dispatched of. Or worse,' he added darkly. Anne thought it best not to reply to that and stayed quiet.

'Do you want to see the rest of it?' James asked suddenly.

'The rest?'

'This is just one floor. Torchwood Newcastle stretches underground across most of the North East. We're near Morpeth now, but the tunnels stretch for miles.' Anne shot a nervous glance back at the medical suite, but James assured her Susan would be fine, and anyway, excitement and curiosity was now overcoming shock. She followed him down into the bowels of the earth.

'How many of you are there in here?' Anne asked.

'Four, most of the time, plus a short list of people who keep an eye on things for us.'

'That's not many.'

'Not really, but we need a small number to stay under the radar. Being the most secret part of a secret organisation means we have to be good at covering our tracks.' James led the young woman through threading corridors that ran outwards from the central cavern inside the hill. While gazing at the night sky through the conference room roof, it occurred to her to wonder why none of this could be seen from the outside.

'I told you, it's a perception filter,' James explained. 'The whole base is covered by a chameleon circuit we salvaged from a wreck about twelve years ago. It effectively makes us invisible.'

'But how does it work?' Anne asked, amazed.

'Does it matter?'

'Does that mean you have no idea?' she retorted. James gave her an amused look and led on through the base.

They came to a long corridor lined with cells with toughened glass doors. Cells, Anne realised, cells to keep the aliens contained. It felt very uncomfortable to walk along, and she couldn't help but wonder what would happen to her and Susan by the end of all this.

Something slammed into one of the cell doors. Anne yelped and jumped back into James as the thing pressed itself against the glass, snapping and growling viciously. It crashed again and stood there on hind legs, its vicious eyes observing them and thick ropes of saliva clinging to its three inch long fangs. It was a sheer impression of hairy power and ferocity.

'What is that thing?' Anne cried as it detached itself from the glass and peered at them as though stalking them.

'That,' replied James, 'is my second-in-command and researcher, Richard. He's a werewolf.'

'OK.'

'Are you all right?'

'Yeah, fine. I'm just having my barriers of reality crashing down around me, but apart from that, I'm great.' Anna was still staring, transfixed, at the werewolf pacing in its cell. 'How did it happen?'

'Three years ago, we got a call to a flat in Byker. There had been pets killed and strange sightings in dark alleys. Richard took the beast down but not before it bit him. Come the next full moon, he transformed. I didn't have the heart to kill him, so we put him on suppressant drugs to keep his, err, inner wolf, at bay, and stick him down here once a month.' James waved a hand in front of Anne's eyes. Richard seemed to have transfixed her. Hardly surprising considering what she had been through so far. He just regretted what he was going to have to do to them both before this night was over.

Susan, awake now and quietly watching Reese at his workstation, turned as her friend came up from nowhere, very pale and quiet. She was being supported by the man who had carried her to that big black car. She had missed out on the introductions.

'Anne! There you are, I've been waiting for you,' she called. 'Isn't this place great? I have never seen computers like these – I would kill to have this sort of technology. Reese has been showing me what they can do.' She smiled over at Reese as he walked over too.

'You're not looking bad considering,' Anne said.

'I'm fine! The technology they have here is way advanced of anything in the NHS,' was the reply. Susan showed her friend her arm – the skin had been completely sealed up, as if it had never been slashed in the first place. Reese interrupted. 'Everything's cleaned away, sir, I didn't think we really needed an autopsy on the Unpronouncables,' he said smartly.

'No,' James replied. 'Find out where they parked and what they were doing with those children, we need to find them.' Reese nodded and returned to his console. James looked at the two teenagers standing before him. 'We have a problem here,' he said. 'You two know far too much for civilians.'

Anne, who knew something about the ruthlessness of Torchwoods One through Three, tensed, dreading what James would say or do next. He had a gun. 'What are you going to do?' she asked, slightly defiantly, James thought.

'Nothing you'll remember, Anne, don't worry about that,' James replied casually. 'You'll wake up tomorrow and will have forgotten everything about Torchwood.'

'Not if I have anything to – wait, how do you know my name? I never told you.' She glared at him, but he looked unfazed.

'Anne Louisa Prince and Susan Herald; you personally live at 3 Hawthorn Grove and first became suspicious of you geography teacher last Wednesday, when you hacked into your father's computer and found missing kids reports. You then spent twenty three hours sitting outside her house waiting for her to do something suspicious. You are determined aren't you?'

'You were spying on us?'

'Yup.' If looks could kill, James mused, he would be dying in a very painful way right now. He could also see she was doing some quick calculation in her head, to try and talk her way out of it. Well, she would be sorely disappointed; he was far too used to the 'we promise we won't tell anyone' routine.

'Hire us.'

'I'm sorry – what?'

'Hire us,' Anne repeated. 'You said we knew too much for civilians, so give us jobs and make us non-civillians.' Well, her logic was certainly commendable – in theory.

'What do you think about this?' he asked Susan dubiously.

'I'd love to work here,' she replied, looking avidly at the computers. Anne stared up at him, challenging, daring him to say no.

James weighed his options. He could just retcon them and get the whole thing over with, and risk the small chance that they would find a trigger or be completely immune to it. Or he could use the skills that he'd already seen in both of them to help at Torchwood. Rift activity was increasing, and his team were already stretched as far as they could comfortably go. But there was the question of their ages. They were barely eighteen. Everyone at Torchwood died young, it was part of the job, but there was such a thing as too young.

'I tell you what, ' he said finally. 'I will hire you, but not yet. Wait until you finish school, and I will contact you afterwards. We could use people like you.' He paused as he let that bit of information sink in. 'But if you tell anyone about Torchwood, I will make it my personal duty to find you and erase both of your memories – am I clear?' They both nodded.

* * *

Susan's head was throbbing when she woke up the next morning. Birds were singing outside her window, making both her headache and her mood worse. They sounded too happy for her liking. She stuffed her head under her pillow and groaned. Suddenly, everything came flooding back in a whirl of colour, pain and emotion. She shot bolt upright in bed and scrabbled for her phone. Quickly dialling, she waited impatiently for Anne to pick up.

'Hello?' came the sleepy voice on the other end of the line.

'Hi, Anne – please tell me you remember last night?' Susan practically begged.

'What the hell are you talking about? Wait. . .oh my God. Did that really happen?'

* * *

The summer sun blazed high in the sky and made everything seem brighter, more colourful. The Sixth formers flooded out of the school buildings, in some cases extremely happy, and in others severely disappointed. They had just received the results of their A-levels, and were now completely free until they started university or whatever jobs they were headed to. Anne and Susan walked out, congratulating each other. Straight As for both of them, with Susan getting a whopping one hundred percent in her ICT course.

But it was tinged with disappointment too. For six months they had waited for James and Torchwood to come back for them, and they never had. Now it was August. Soon Susan would be going to Oxford, Anne to Edinburgh.

They said goodbye and congratulations to everyone else, promising to meet up in Durham at some point. Anne's mum was waiting in the parking bay. She was about to get in the front passenger side when something made her look up. There, on a mound above the car park was a large black SUV, looking completely out of place in the glittering sunshine. Standing next to it, looking enigmatic, was a tall man with bronze coloured bangs and a battered leather jacket. James.

'Susan!' Anne called, indicating the member of Torchwood casually surveying the scene below him. 'I'll be right back, mum,' she said, closing the car door.

'Where are you going?'

'I've got to go talk to that guy,' was the vague reply. She joined Susan climbing the mound, and in no time they were standing in front of their potential new boss. His face cracked into a genuine smile.

'So, you still want that job?' he asked.


	3. Students

Apologies for the lateness of this chapter, I've been watching quite a lot of House recently - blame NayClem. Hopefully you'll like it, it's Anne and Susan's first day at orchwood, but is thakfully nothing like Gwen's. That would just be weird and taking the parody too far methinks...

* * *

The dawn was only just tinting the sky pale pink and yellow as Anne was sneaking out of the house. It was very early, about six o'clock, and she couldn't afford to wake anyone up.

Since getting a job working four Torchwood Four, the only really secret branch of a secret organisation dealing with aliens, tensions had been high in the Prince household. In order to take the job, Anne had revoked her place at Edinburgh University, and, according to her mother, had thrown away all chances of a proper career. To be honest, Anne didn't really care; she had a job catching aliens – far more exciting than five years studying for a law degree.

Everything was going well, she had reached the kitchen. Clasping her keys as gently as possible, she headed for the door. She was just about –

'Where do you think you're going at such an hour?' came a sharp voice. Mother.

'Work,' Anne replied stiffly. How could she have missed her mum?

'Oh yes, this mysterious job,' Carol said coldly, narrowing her eyes. 'Don't they work regular hours?' she scorned.

'I have to pick Susan up.' The daughter left the house without a cursory glance backwards, personally noting that with her first pay-cheque, she would get a flat as far away from home as possible.

Susan was having similar difficulties. Bravely resisting her father's clever ploy to drive her to work, she waited with a slice of toast in hand for Anne's blue Clio to turn up. Her little sister, too hyper to sleep, was currently quizzing her on why their parents were so annoyed (they had taken Susan's decision to quit Oxford and start a job neither of them knew nothing about understandably hard). Susan was pointedly ignoring Jenna.

'My ride's here!' she called to her father, who, sulking after his thwarted plan, did not reply.

Anne watched her friend plunk into the passenger seat, irritation radiating off her in waves. 'Parent trouble?' she enquired pleasantly. 'Me too,' she said in reply to Susan's grunt.

'Are you ready?'

'Let's go get them aliens!' Susan cried, brightening up immediately. Anne grinned and put the car into gear.

James had given Anne directions, since last time she had been at the Torchwood base it had been dark and she had been in shock. Still, the perception filter on th entrance was a complete bitch, and the two of them went up and down the same stretch of road five times, looking for the little gap in the hedges, their eyes glued to the side of the road.

'You can only see it if you know it's there,' Anne muttered for the third time. Her new boss had told her that she would be able to see it, but it would be like she didn't want to – which was _so _helpful.

Suddenly, Susan shouted 'THERE!' and Anne saw it too. She pulled sharply on the steering wheel, but nobody saw the small blue car swerving out of control because in a second it was swallowed by something that wasn't there. Nobody noticed that because people never notice anything.

And then they were there, parked in front of the bomb-proof doors that were the main entrance to Torchwood Newcastle. Right where it said _park here._ They sat there and contemplated the direction their lives had surged in.

'Well, get out then,' Anne nudged after a while.

'Why should I have to get out first?' Susan replied, her voice high to a point of being almost hysterical. 'You get out.'

Being nervous and unsure meant they had reverted to the classic human reaction of safety in numbers. Anne did set much store with running with the herd, so she sighed and got out, partially to prove a point. She did drag Susan with her of course.

She punched in the keycode for the door, annoyed at how her heart was juddering with nerves. Susan yelped in surprise when the small Renault began to descend into the ground with the high-tech groaning of hydraulics.

'My car!'

'It's fine, it's going into the garage,' said a voice. James stepped through the bomb-door.

Casually he took in his two newest team members, dressed in jeans and trainers, as instructed. This job required a ridiculous amount of running. Susan wore a denim jacket to keep out the cold and Anne did the same with a long leather coat that reached to their knees. Usually, he recruited people for certain skills they were praised for in other jobs, but there was just something about these two – after all, not many could gain one hundred per cent on an ICT exam, and not everybody could stare down a transformed werewolf after being abducted and taken to the secret base of an organisation that dealt with aliens. 'You'll do,' he said with a smirk, motioning them inside.

'Oi! Everyone!' he hollered when they had reached the great pyramidal cavern that served as Torchwood central control. Three people looked up from assorted files, computers and dead aliens. 'Meet our new staff.'

'We already did,' the woman Susan remembered as Mick retorted.

'Suit yourself. The only one of the crew you haven't met properly is Richard,' the boss said, turning round to the two eighteen year olds. A tall, broad-shouldered man who was at least six-foot-two with mousy brown hair leaped up the stairs and held out his hand, grinning. It was scarred and callused. As Anne shook it, he tugged her in close and locked grey eyes on hers. Behind her, James stiffened slightly.

'Just as I thought,' Richard mused. 'You're that lass from the cell.' He regarded her until a glance at his glaring boss made him release his hold. He grinned, slinking away.

'Ignore him,' James advised. Easier said than done.

Reese, monitoring the computer screens, cleared his throat. 'Sir, we have a problem.' He typed a few buttons on the keyboard and a grainy audio filled the room. CCTV footage appeared on a blank bit of wall. The picture showed a man in a suit with a helmet – no, a face, that looked strangely fish-like. It was red and striped and there was even a tail projecting out of the back of the head. In a dark rock concert it would be passed off as just another Mohawk. Susan recognised where the fish-man was walking – down Claypath and into Durham.

At the same time, a male voice patched through the registration and model of the car the fish-man had just crashed into a wall. The Porsche had been stolen.

'Wait a minute – isn't that the police?' Anne quizzed. She had heard enough calls like that on her dad's radio when she had been driven to school in his car.

'Yup.' Richard said.

'It's usually the best way to pinpoint the location of paranormal activity,' Reese supplied.

'Paranormal activity?' Richard scoffed. 'Whatever happened to just saying aliens?'

'It's better than _phantasmagoria_,' Reese retorted straight back. 'That's what Numero Uno calls it. Besides, it's not always aliens. Remember that time –'

'Shut up!' commanded James, making them fall silent immediately. Banter was all well and good when there wasn't a crisis on. Every minute wasted meant more people would become suspicious of any alien threat. True, blowfish were relatively low risk, but there would still have to be huge amounts of retcon given out if the situation wasn't contained. 'Get the stuff and get the car. Richard – kit these girls out.'

'Yessir!' Richard saluted, disappearing and returning five seconds later with two handguns which held out to the probies. They looked very dubious until he told them the guns weren't loaded.

'Just point it at people if you want something done, they tend to listen more,' he instructed on the way out.

'Not today,' James said sternly, making Richard roll his eyes. 'We're in public. Guns only if there's no alternative.'

The huge black SUV had pulled up while they were talking and Reese got out. He would be staying behind to monitor from Base. Anne and Susan glanced at each other, unimpressed.

'It's a Range Rover.'

'What's wrong with it? Please don't tell me you were expecting the Batmobile,' Richard chastised.

'Well, duh,' Anne retorted. 'This is a bit. . .low-tech for Torchwood isn't it?'

'Low-tech? _Low-tech? _This thing only looks like a Range Rover to keep away nosy idiots that consist of the human race. It's a disguise –if you're familiar with the term.'

'I'm familiar with a few terms I'd be happy to share with you,' Anne grumbled.

'Stop bickering and get in.' James was despairing; they weren't even at work an hour and they had already started picking fights with his second-in-command – they might fit in well. Still glaring daggers at each other, the newbies and the werewolf got in the car, strapping on seatbelts as James explained all the fancy extras that you would definitely never see on a real Range Rover – the bullet-proofing along the side that was only an inch thick and weighed next to nothing, for example.

James drove like a maniac, but the car never skidded or took corners wrong, so it was almost completely safe. During the journey, Susan went over in her head what James had said to them both on top of the hill at school, the day their lives had changed forever.

_'Welcome to Torchwood Four then,' he had said. 'Hopefully you'll have long and happy careers with us, but it's not a guarantee. What we do is dangerous, and sometimes immoral actions are necessary for the greater good. People die young. It's a fact. Do you still want this?'_

_He had warned them, told them what to expect, but at that moment, in sunny August, they had nodded their heads, butterflies turning in their stomachs at the thought of the excitement they were going to have. After all, they were leaving school, standing on the edge of a precipice of the unknown, and it was thrilling; like a base jumper on the edge of a cliff. It was only now, more than a month later, that the realisation finally began to sink in for Susan: base jumpers died when they faltered. Would they be able to handle it? They were only eighteen after all, how long could they last?_

'Park in the Marriott car park,' she suggested when she realised where the SUV was.

'Why?'

'I know the code, and it'll be easier than parking in town.' Susan was right. The centre of Durham was an entirely pedestrian zone, and it was hard enough trying to get in with a small two-door car, never mind a huge black thing that (no matter how well disguised) looked like something out of a _Men In Black_ movie. Besides, they would have to pay ridiculous fees to park there. Much better to walk a little way and pay nothing.

The plan was settled. The two probies would be split up – Anne with James and Susan with Richard. Mick would be going solo, swinging round to enter the centre from the west by North Road. They were going to close in on the blowfish, who was currently being thrown out of HMV by tall, spotty youth for scaring valued customers. Reese warned them to hurry, because the police were on their way.

The blowfish was now running very quickly through the Prince Bishop's Shopping Centre, because he had just stolen and eaten an incredible amount of chocolate from Thornton's. Despite the fact that blowfish digestive systems didn't like chocolate at all.

'It's always the same with this species,' James muttered as they chased after it.

Their pincer movement worked well; the blowfish was cut off at Waterstones by Susan and Richard, and when it abruptly about turned south down Silver Street the four members of Torchwood were hot on its heels – or tail. Michaela had the other end covered, and finally the renegade alien was cornered. It raised its hands in uneasy defeat as James eased the tazer gun from his pocket.

Then the red fish was gone, darting up a tiny alley between Topshop and Orange. James growled and chased after it. Anne, with an innate knowledge of Durham streets, born of countless hours spent categorising it for geography fieldwork, sped off back the way she had come. She knew where the side-street came out.

People were looking. Lots of people. Things like this weren't often seen on the docile streets of Durham. Luckily, this lovely city had one asset that Richard decided to take full advantage of.

'Students, eh?' he complained loudly to one woman, who quickly hurried away. It was a simple explanation, and one that didn't take much to believe – students were always radical, doing stupid stuff to get attention. With the crowds dispersing, the main problem seemed over. Now, all they had to do was distract the police and get the blowfish away without anyone realising.

This was bad. This alley went on forever – dingy and confined, with nowhere to go but forward. Or back. And there was no way he was doing that. That human was there. He had a gun. So he had to keep running.

But it was so hard. His species wasn't made for running in air. His gills were burning, his legs, so unused to this ungainly method of moving, were seizing up. If only he could get away.

Yes! The human's footsteps were dimming, falling behind. He was going to get away. . .

A force, like a storm tide, slammed into him from the front. Another human. A female. They both went flying downwards with the momentum of their collision, and there was a painful thud as they hit the floor. The female rolled away and then the other human was pointing the nozzle of a very real and loaded gun in his face.

'Don't move,' he warned. The blowfish did as he was told, watching with resigned hatred at the woman who was standing next to the man, brushing dirt off her coat. She was breathing hard, but the look of cold triumph shining on her face was unmistakable, and detestable.

'Well done,' James remarked. The blowfish was safely stowed in the SUV's back compartment. 'We wouldn't have caught it otherwise.' He turned to his second-in-command, who told him about how the situation with the public and the police had been dealt with.

'So no retcon needed today,' Richard concluded happily, getting in the passenger side. 'By the way, well done, newbie.'

'My name's Anne.'

'No, it's newbie until I think otherwise.'

'Hang on, if Anne's newbie, what am I?' Susan asked.

'Newbie 2,' said Richard. Susan almost growled.

'Hey, children!' James called above the noise. 'Didn't I tell you to ignore him? And wolf-boy, stop annoying them. They did well today.'

Anne and Susan beamed. Richard grumbled curses to himself and slouched in the seat like a chastised child as the SUV sped away. The chase was over, but, as the new girls were about to find out, the paperwork hadn't even begun.

* * *

Okay, so we have established that Richard is a jerk, but trust me, James is not continuously playing parent. Mick and Reese didn't get much of a mention, which is a terrible shame, because they're great people. I will do better next time! Speaking of which...

**Preview**

_A mysterious object has been found in a suitcase at Newcastle airport, but it's gone before Torchwood can find out what it is - or who it belongs to. One thing is for certain: it is alien. While the team try to find it, people are dropping like flies all over the city, but soon the problem changes. No longer are people dying, but gain strength and become impervious to bullets. Torchwood trace these strange happenings back to a disused warehouse, but whatever lurks inside is not friendly. _

Dosn't that sound interesting? Please, leave a comment!


	4. Each To Her Own

For NayClem, who will surely kill me if I don't update (I'm not kidding either). In retribution for this, I'm saying that it's her birthday next week, so everybody bombard her with PMs wishing her many happy returns - mwahaha! Fill up her inbox!

Anyway, chapter four of We Found Torchwood 4! Enjoy!

Susan quickly found her place at Torchwood Four. In no more than three weeks she had completely modified the computer system, smoothing all the glitches left by the idiot person who had installed it, and had improved it enough to now pirate transmissions by the police, coastguard, three mobile phone networks and all the local radio stations. By the end of the second month she had hijacked some alien technology that allowed her to filter conversations for any alien-sounding phrases, meaning that it no longer had to be done manually. Her work desk was also the one opposite Reese's – a prospect that wasn't entirely awful.

Anne, however, took a bit more adjusting. She was, frankly, crap with computers. She couldn't make a coffee to save her life and the only thing she seemed good at so far was rugby tackling blowfish in the back-alleys of Durham. Unfortunately, such instances were few on the ground. So she found herself filing reports for all the artefacts that came in, which was okay, if a bit monotonous, and rare. The Rift at Torchwood Newcastle wasn't exactly the most active of rips in space and time. So quite a lot of the time she found herself on the underground firing range, targeting aliens with weapons that had fallen through the Rift that Richard, the weapons expert, was testing. Inadvertently, she morphed into a sort of assistant, learning a lot about guns and other equally interesting weapons in a few short weeks. Even with that she sometimes found herself wondering what university was like, and on one occasion even found herself longing to be there, since it would have been Edinburgh and there would have been a lot of lads with smexy Scottish accents. Torchwood was definitely not living up to expectations.

Susan was absently flicking through a magazine that had a picture of Jesse McCartney on the cover when the monitor beeped a little louder than normal. Her feet dropped down from the workbench in a flash as she examined the problem. She smirked. Finally, some action.

There was a knock on James' office.

'Come in,' he said absently, looking up as one of his new recruits entered with what looked like a hastily printed out report. His brow furrowed slightly as he read it. 'Well done, good job. We'd never have got that.'

Susan smiled. 'I already did a scan of the plane using our satellite –' one she had hijacked from the Russian military without them knowing – 'and it seems the object is about two feet in diameter – it's emitting a type of temporal radiation, so it's definitely alien, if not from our Rift. It'll get into Newcastle at 11:56.'

James nodded. 'And we'll be there waiting for it.' He quickly dismissed Susan and spoke into the intercom for Reese and Richard to join him in the garage.

* * *

Richard looked up, grumbling. He had a lot of work to do. Why couldn't Mick go on whatever daring expedition their boss was planning? Why not the newbie? He glanced across to where Anne was working with quiet diligence trying to figure out how a piece of machinery worked. It was from the tiny Chula stealth warship that had fallen through the Rift and into Tynemouth in the wee hours of the last Saturday morning, complete for some reason with a detonated World War Two bomb that had been put in stasis. They got rid of the bomb easy enough, and now the weapons expert and his new helper were slowly pulling apart the ship piece by piece to figure out just what it had been doing in 1941. That and it was fun.

Anne glanced up briefly as he set down the instruments. 'You off then?' she grinned.

'Yup. Unfortunately we all must answer the call of our illustrious leader. See you in a bit.'

'Bye.'

Everything became a lot quieter after he left. Well, it wasn't as if they had been talking anyway, but the cavernous space that served as a hangar for the spaceship became a lot emptier. Well, for a while. Anne didn't know how she could tell, but whatever the piece of equipment in front of her was not originally part of the ship. Maybe it just looked slightly different. It looked like a CD player to her. She pressed one of the buttons she imagined was 'play', just to see what happened.

'What the hell?' she shouted with hands clasped over her ears as 1940's slow music played out over an invisible speaker, echoing in the vast space. 'What the hell is _Glen Miller _doing on a bloody spaceship!? Shit!' She quickly hit the 'pause' button and took a deep breath. This was going to take some figuring.

'Is everything all right down there?' Mick's voice asked over the intercom. For security reasons, all sounds in the vaults were recorded and patched through to upstairs.

'Yeah, fine,' Anne replied, still nursing her eardrums. Maybe finding the volume button would have been a better idea first. . .

* * *

Meanwhile, the Torchwood Four SUV, cleverly disguised as an ordinary Range Rover, was cruising at eighty-five mph along the A696 towards the airport. In the back, Susan was running more scans on the incoming aircraft and downloading the information onto a handheld computer that was also a scanner, chemical analyser, mobile phone and GPS unit. Richard sat in the front, looking mildly bored, and Reese, who was there because he could speak Russian (the nationality of the plane) sat quietly behind the second in command.

'So what's the plan for when we get there?' Susan asked eventually.

'We see whoever's in control, pull a few strings, take custody of the plane,' James explained. 'Then we search the cargo, question the pilot, and retcon everyone.'

'Won't that take ages though?'

'Nope. We only need to wipe the memories of the pilot and erase the log of the alien artefact.'

'What about the controller?'

Richard handed her something small and laminated from the glove box. 'Welcome to the wonderful world of false IDs,' he said.

There were several loud shouts in Geordie accents when the SUV pulled up on the curb right outside the terminal building, disregarding the road markings saying 'Taxis Only'. The Torchwood team, disguised as homeland security, sauntered in past the W H Smiths and long lines of impatient businessmen and women who were scared of running late for their flights. It didn't take long for James' imposing figure to get them admitted to the office of the man in charge of airport security. Max Johnson turned out to be a middle aged woman with a very severe and disbelieving expression on her face.

'Homeland security, are you?' she checked reproachfully, obviously unhappy about having her rank pulled. 'And just exactly what are you doing here?'

'There is a plane going to land in this airport in – ' James checked his watch – 'seven minutes, that we believe may have on board an artefact that could contain a threat to the safety of the country.'

'I assure you, Mr -?'

'James Storm,' James replied, smiling pleasantly. 'This is my team – Richard Cooney, Reese Smith and Susan Herald. As I was saying, we need to search that plane.'

'And as I was saying, Mr _Storm_, Newcastle airport has an impeccable record for security. If we discover a threat, we will deal with it ourselves. Besides, I highly doubt you are what you say you are – You don't look like Homeland Security to me.' Sneeringly she took in the sight of the battered leather jacket on the ringleader, the frayed jeans of the girl (who was far too young anyway to be a field agent). She didn't dare find anything wrong with the surly looking man he had called Richard though.

'What will convince you of authenticity?' James asked, his smile starting to strain.

'A warrant.' Nobody could forge such a document.

For a minute the lackies looked stumped, defeated. But their leader persisted anyway. 'If I gave you one, would you stop complaining?'

'Yes.'

'You would stop trying to block us and let us look at that plane's cargo?'

'Yes.'

'You would actually let us do our jobs?'

'Yes.'

With a flourish, the man called James pulled a rather crumpled piece of paper out of one of his pockets, smoothed it out and handed it to the seething security officer. 'I believe everything is in order. Be assured my superior will be in contact with you.' Gathering his team about him, James swept from the room without so much as a backward glance.

With everyone else out and Mick dissecting a hoix in the medical bay, Anne was left to monitor the search programs. She was only half paying attention though, studying a Sudoku puzzle and glancing up occasionally at the screen that streamed hoards of digital information in mere nanoseconds.

* * *

One of the programs Susan had installed involved the police records. James had asked for it especially. Let the boys in blue do the legwork, then swoop down before they could blow themselves up. Susan had put a bug in the police case log, marking any unexplained and unsolved murders, and if more than five murders of the same M.O. were traced, an alarm beeped. Anne clicked on the flashing box.

Images of an autopsied man, named Jack Speelers, appeared on the screen, with strange rope like burn marks on his wrists, and scratches on his arms and face. The police report said defensive wounds, but Anne guessed it was only because they didn't know what it really was. Four other men had been found in a similar state in the last two weeks, all with shredded organs and slit abdomens. But according to the pathology, these wounds were inflicted post mortem. There was no motive, no suspect, no explanation.

'Hey, Mick!' Anne called.

'What is it? I'm a little busy at the minute,' came the reply.

'What do you think of the wounds on this guy? Police don't know squat.'

Intrigued, the medical officer came over to the computer; Anne tried to ignore the smell of hoix innards and the thin coat of shiny, ear-wax coloured slime covering the front of Michaela's lab coat.

'Hmm, let's see here,' she mumbled, zooming in on the photos. 'Well, these are definitely chemical burns, and the incisions are too precise for defensive wounds, see? No tearing of the skin.'

'What about the stomach?'

'I can't tell. I'd need to see it firsthand. But that wasn't the cause of death?'

'Can you tell what was?'

'Nope. I need a body.' Mick continued to stare at the photos of the corpse, enthralled. 'There are two ways to get one.' She glanced at Anne, who was looking puzzled. 'Either we go down to the police station and raid their cold storage, or we wait for another body to turn up and get to it before they do.'

'I know which one James will prefer,' Anne muttered. Waiting for another murder would mean less involvement with the police, which meant fewer questions, and less sense of being found out. The two new girls had already had a lecture from their boss about 'necessary evils' and the skewed morality of Torchwood: helping people was important; catching dangerous aliens while remaining undetected was more so.

'So, what should we do?'

'We?' Mick laughed. '_You_ can plot where the bodies were found, and establish a sensible area for us to patrol. I've got to finish this autopsy.' Anne watched after her, slightly peeved, before setting to work.

* * *

'It's this one,' Susan said decisively, as the handheld whirred satisfactorily as it picked up the radiation soaked into the case containing the alien artefact. James and Richard, the two more imposing of their party, were talking to the pilot, which left her and Reese to search through the cargo. She helped him remove the heavy lid. Inside was empty.

'Oh crap,' Reese muttered. James was not going to like this. 'Can you trace it?' he asked desperately.

Susan shook her head, explaining that outside the particles of radiation would have diffused too far. They would just have to break the unfortunate news t their boss very gently.

* * *

One thing could be said about James, he liked a grand entrance. Anne was just finishing the report on the strange murders when he threw open the door, Richard and Susan following at a safe distance, and stormed down onto the main floor of the base.

'I want everything on that plane, on my desk, in half an hour!' he barked to nobody in particular as he stormed through and into his office, slamming the door behind him.

'Erm, what was all that about?' Anne asked Richard.

'The shits who smuggled whatever it was into the country got away before we could see what it was. He hates it when that happens – especially when public servants are involved,' the second in command explained. 'If I were you, I'd get back to the basement – it's where I'm going.' And without any more warning, he disappeared down one of the many tunnels that led off from the central floor.

'Now that's what I call loyalty,' she muttered laconically, wondering if she dared go up there and disturb her boss. She would have to, at some point. 'How long are you going to be Su?'

'About five minutes,' was the reply. The speed at which the computer genius's fingers flew over the keyboard was phenomenal.

Six minutes later, there was a knock on the door of James' office.

'Come in.'

'Err, hi,' Anne said nervously, peeking round the door. The boss was sat with his feet on the large desk, hands propping his chin. He glanced round as she entered.

'Don't just stand there,' he said not unkindly. 'What have you got?'

'Susan got the stats for the aircraft and where it came from,' she replied, handing him a file. 'And I thought – well, me and Mick thought –'

'Mick and I,' James corrected with a wry grin, looking extremely amused at the miffed expression that crossed the newbie's face.

'_Mick and I_,' Anne repeated, taking care to inject every syllable with irritation - trust her to get a boss who was also a Grammar Nazi, 'thought you should take a look at this.' She handed him the other report, the one about the five murdered construction workers. First James looked suspicious, then puzzled, then worried, then finally excited. The new recruit watched nervously as each different mood flickered across his face, and jumped when he suddenly leaped to his feet, grinning.

'Well done,' he said simply. She followed him out onto the wire walkway that led down into the main workspace. '_Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears_,' he quoted loudly. 'Conference, board room, now.'

The three people working at the computers glanced at each other in bewilderment at their boss's sudden exuberance, before wisely following him into the cavern that was the glass roofed board room. There was a plan of action to discuss.

How was that Nay? Reviews are always welcome. Pretty Please?


	5. It's Always The Invertebrates

Second part of the two part story. For NayClem. Enjoy peoples!

* * *

Richard, Reese and Susan looked rather confused as they entered the board room – cautiously, because they thought they were being drawn in for another bollocking for losing the cargo, similar to the one they had received in the SUV. James' suddenly vibrant and happy looking face disturbed them somewhat.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he announced. 'We have a new priority. Five bodies have been found on the streets of Newcastle, all construction workers working for various companies working around this building.' Mick, who was in charge of the powerpoint, brought up a picture of a grotty shell of a building, red brick, with all the windows now punched out plyboard and the words _R & W HAWTHORN LESLIE _written across the top in big white block capitals.

'Well what are we waiting for?' Richard roared, spoiling for action. 'It's obvious that whatever it is, it's in there – let's go flush it out!'

James held up a steadying pair of hands and his second-in-command quieted down immediately. 'Before we can do that, we need to know what 'it' is. And for that we need to take a look at one of these.' The boss tapped one of the autopsy photos behind him. Reese groaned.

'What's wrong?' Susan asked.

'We're going body-snatching again,' was the grim reply. 'Don't you remember what happened the last time we tried that?' he demanded of James.

'So we spent a night in lock-up. At least we managed to prevent the Oestros blowing up Whitby,' James said casually. The entire conversation had just shot about ten feet over the newbies' heads. All they did know was that they would be working well into tomorrow morning.

'How do we know there'll be a body tonight?' Susan asked.

'The attacks have been getting closer together,' Mick supplied. 'First gap was five days, and it's slowly been getting smaller. The last one occurred last night.'

'So it's more than likely whatever it is will strike again tonight,' James finished. 'So let's rock and roll!'

'It puts a new meaning into the phrase 'graveyard shift', doesn't it?' Richard chuckled as they loaded the SUV with equipment they might need and checked the spare rounds of ammunition stored in pockets of coats and jeans. A while ago, Anne's mother had had a go wondering what sort of important work could involve her daughter looking like a scruff.

'It's deceptive,' was all she could prise from her daughter.

* * *

The SUV, so black it absorbed the streetlights, was the only vehicle anywhere in the vicinity when the team pulled up on the industrial estate. Susan had stayed behind at base to better organise the team and keep an eye on anything else going on.

'All clear?' James asked into his comm.

'Yup.'

Using silent hand signals, James directed everyone to split up, and they parted along separate side streets, pistols held out before them and senses alert to any movement in the shadows. Susan coordinated them using the security camera networks she had managed to hack into in five seconds flat.

The world was a strange place at night. Water, rippled by eddies of wind, refracted the light glittering on the main body of the Tyne, and lapped at the caging concrete of the dry docks that lined the riverbank. Only one ship was in at the moment, an old liner leaking rust into the water as it was dismantled – a far cry from the ship-building glory days of forty odd years before. Elsewhere, cranes, dormant metal framework looming presences above the docks, swayed gently in the breeze, their woven steel cables creaking and groaning slightly as they moved. The orange wash of the streetlights over everything made the scene downright creepy.

'That's a dead end, dear,' Susan said tiredly into Anne's ear.

'I know, doesn't mean it doesn't have a body in it,' she retorted quietly.

'I wish you wouldn't snap at me like that – I can't see you down the end,' Susan sighed.

'I know what I'm doing.'

'Has anyone ever told you two that you sound like an old married couple?' Richard interjected through the earpieces. According to Susan's monitors he was three streets away, checking behind some industrial sized bins.

'Shut up you,' Anne and Susan growled at the same time.

'Old married threesome,' Mick concluded.

'Focus please children, I only want one body bag having to be used tonight.' Despite his stern tone, Anne could just hear their boss's ribs cracking with trying not to laugh at the little exchange. There was radio silence for a few minutes while everyone resumed the search.

'I found something,' said Reese. Everyone paused, listening for confirmation, tension taut on the air. 'It's a body, beaten up the same as the others,' the linguist verified. 'And there's a smell, sort of metallic – I'm pretty sure it's coming from the body.'

'Right, Mick, get over there now. I want an examination,' James ordered. 'Susan, show her where he went.'

'Yessir.'

The body was a broad built man, still in his construction overalls and boots. The yellow hard hat had been misplaced somewhere in the struggle. And there had been a struggle. While Mick tried to piece together the clues left behind on the corpse, taking samples of fluid and photos of the ripped apart abdomen, the others skulked around the edges, trying to find hints of what happened in this man's last moments.

'His name is Robert Nesbitt,' Michaela called to the others after she found his wallet in a side pocket. She would conduct a more thorough examination back at Base, but it was important to get all the evidence they could at the scene. They had to work quickly though; the police might have had the same idea of patrolling – though James reckoned they weren't even half as good at it.

'Looks like he was having a fag,' Richard said, holding up the still warm end of a burned out cigarette. The werewolf's incredible sense of smell allowed him to make the connection between the smell of the smoke and the scent of the body beneath all the gore.

'There's blood everywhere,' Anne gasped, looking up at the walls of the little alley.

'Are you all right?' James checked.

'Yeah just about,' she replied with a deep breath. 'Whatever it was went through there.' She pointed to a little gap between the brick and the corrugated and rusty iron that served to cut the alley in half. It had been chewed aside to make the gap bigger, and whatever had managed to bend steel in the way those ripped slivers had was certainly capable of overpowering a construction worker on a fag break.

James frowned. 'We'll go round the other side and check it out. Can you see anything Susan?'

'No, I'm blind there. They obviously don't count dark alleyways as dangerous enough to put CCTV.'

'Okay then – come on Anne.'

'Wait!' Susan's voice had turned slightly frantic over the comm. link. 'No time guys, the police are on their way.'

'How far away?' James asked.

'Just entering the industrial estate now.' There was the faint sound of the tech's fingers wildly tapping on keyboards as she tried to divert the Fuzz. James wasted no time in ordering the body be put in a bag and all evidence scattered. They had all worn latex gloves, but anything that could lead the authorities back to Torchwood was potentially dangerous. They all helped carry the black plastic and load it into the boot of the SUV. The black paintjob and almost silent uranium engine let the vehicle diffuse into the night, slipping almost straight past the patrol car undetected. James always smiled smugly when he outwitted the police.

* * *

Back at Base, everyone crowded around the autopsy table in the morgue as Mick examined the body under the bright halogen lights. She worked in silence first, probing at the shorn flesh and examining the ropy burns on his arms.

'These wounds were made from the inside out,' she observed quietly, almost to herself. 'Something sharp and jagged.' Eventually she stood straight, stretching out her back and neck as a protest to having to bend over the body so long. More than one member of the team wished that they could do the same. 'From what I can tell, whatever did this held his arms with whatever made the burns – the computer's analysing it now – and shoved something down his throat. That was a few hours ago. The coroner said that the long slit was post-mortem, but only because the insides were ruptured first. Whatever it was broke out of his stomach and did a hell of a lot of damage before bursting out and crawling off.' She seemed to take a perverse sort of glee from the gruesomeness of it all.

'But what is _it_?' Reese asked, looking slightly worried. Further along the row, Richard was holding his nose, evidently trying to keep the blood-smell away from anything that could trigger his lycanthropy. Mick shrugged. 'I'll get the results from the lab tests in a little while, although I did find something that looked like shell flaked off on his clothes. I'd say we were dealing with some sort of invertebrate.'

'It's always the invertebrates,' James sighed wearily. 'Richard, find the bug spray. As soon as we know what it is, we're going back to the docks.'

* * *

The docks looked little better in the slug-grey light of morning. The cranes still stood immobile, now dully coloured in blue and yellow, but still looming moodily. This time, the Torchwood team, including Susan because James decided it would be better to go in with full strength, surrounded the _R & W HAWTHORN LESLIE _building, and, in two teams led by James and Richard, kicked the rotten doors in from either end and routed the three upper floors. All they found were a few scattered rat droppings and two startled pigeons. The only thing to indicate the Eeslictix was the half decomposed corpse of a vagrant, killed in the same way as the others.

'Where now?' Susan mouthed to James. The results of the lab tests had brought up a name: Eeslictix. It drew a frown from the boss as he ran his hands through his hair and disappeared to the armoury. And came back with a really big gun. That was not a good sign. According to the archives, Eeslictix were parasitic insects about one metre long, that spent the first three stages of life in water and dark, damp corners. _R & W HAWTHORN LESLIE_ was the perfect spot. The fourth stage in their life cycle was rather gruesome. In their natural habitat, they would crawl out of swamps and latch onto the first warm-blooded thing they saw. On Tyneside construction workers took the places of mammalian aliens. The Eeslictix had only shown up once before, in Canary Wharf at Torchwood One, where they had gone on a killing spree. James' database had all too detailed descriptions of how they grasped their prey with poisonous tentacles and forced themselves inside the bodies of their hosts, finding the easiest orifice and diving in. Once inside the stomach, their flimsy, watery skin hardened into thick shell and it tore out again, using its host's flesh and organ's as fuel for rapid growth. Susan half shuddered at the photographs the London branch had kindly thought to add to the report.

'There's a set of stairs leading down on this side,' whispered Richard's voice softly in their ears. 'It smells metallic.'

'We'll come around. Wait for us,' James instructed, moving off with the stealth of a predator both Reese and Susan envied. Eeslictix were very good at hearing.

Anne glanced at her friend as the second party approached; she looked pale – fieldwork definitely didn't seem to suit her, but it could have just been the light. Shaking off distractions, she tightened the grip on her modified Beretta handgun and focused on the bottom of the stairs.

Richard went on point, with Reese bringing up the rear, walking almost backwards down the stairs to make sure no nasty surprises caught them from behind. The sight in the cellar that greeted them was almost overpowering. A metallic tang overlaid everything, so powerful that the team could taste it. Five giant parasites, looking slightly like dragonfly nymphs except for the fact that they were beetle black with glittering ruby red eyes (six each), lay on discarded shipping equipment, left over when the company became bankrupt. Over the far side of the dim room was a pile of slippery looking eggs, covered in a slime similar to the sample Mick had taken from Robert Nesbitt's body. A breach in the river wall had let stagnant water pool about ankle deep on the floor. Too late the team noticed and splashed slightly, sending ripples to the dozing Eeslictix. They woke with a rattling click of their armoured rear ends, thrashing them wildly. One of them, nearest, screeched. It was larger than the others and came straight for them, thrashing its ugly tail this way and that.

Richard wasted no time in pumping it with silver (they found it worked better than lead, in certain circumstances), and the huge insect-like thing slithered away, hissing. But the others were coming forward now, whether protecting their eggs or just hungry, Susan couldn't tell. She definitely preferred organising the team from the air.

A large sonic blast from James' weapon left silence in its wake. The nearest Eeslictix writhed as it died, dark bluish blood ribboning the stinking water.

'It's got to charge up before I can use it again,' their boss said apologetically. He received more than one glare as the others converged in a half circle around the bottom of the stairs.

On impulse, Anne shot not at the circling black carapaces, but at the pile of slimed eggs in the corner. A large section shot outwards with an unimpressive squelch. Whether the adults were responding to the plight of their offspring or the Eeslictix just wanted to get the measure of this new threat, they turned away, heading for the egg pile. James took out another one with his blaster and it made a horrible noise as it died.

'Everyone shoot at the nest!' James ordered. The eggs skyrocketed, blown apart by the continuous volleys. It kept the Eeslictix busy while James picked them off one by one. Soon the stagnant water sploshing around the team's ankles was awash with thick black blood and slime as the creatures died. Some part of James wished they were easier to kill, just so they would die in less pain. But there was no helping what had to be done.

The eggs ran out before the Eeslictix did. The dull sound of empty cartridges splashed as the team hastily reloaded, trying to keep the remaining monster at bay. There was a quiet curse from Richard as he glanced back and saw the gun charging in James' hands. It wouldn't be fully powered before the scuttling black thing reached them.

'Any more bright ideas?' he asked Anne beside him. She wasn't listening, trembling slightly at her first taste of true combat. The smoke of her gun and the sight along the barrel of the thing stalking them was enough to root her to the spot. Shooting at the nest had just been an impulse; she hadn't actually thought about it.

'Retreat! Everyone, back up the stairs!' Her boss's voice, cool and commanding, shook her out of her trance. The Eeslictix was bearing down on them, snarling with its large, clicking mandibles. A lucky shot took out one of its legs as she backed up, led by Richard's hand. Bluish blood spilled into the water.

There wasn't even a minute until the creature pursued them, maddened by the loss of its eggs and limb. All guns swung round to face the threat, but it took no notice of the harmless silver as the bullets chipped away at its armour. It had only eyes for the big one in the middle of the line.

With his mouth set in a grim line, James fired.

* * *

There was a knock on the door.

'Come in,' James intoned, looking up from a book on Yeats. He was only marginally surprised to see Anne standing there, looking slightly nervous, like she wanted to tell him something. He frowned. Shutting the book, he laid it on his desk in place of his feet to show she had his undivided attention.

'Yeats?' she asked as she sat opposite him.

'Is there a problem with Yeats?' he asked, slightly protective of his battered, age damaged book, yet with a gleam in his eye that showed he knew something she didn't.

'No, I like him,' she smiled nervously. She realised she was staring slightly and dropped her eyes.

'What did you want to talk to me about?' the boss prompted.

'I. . .i think I should resign,' she said quickly. The silence turned cold.

'Why?' It couldn't be because of the mangled corpses they found under the stagnant water in the cellar. While Susan had been slightly queasy and had stood at the top of the stairs with the like-minded Reese, Anne had helped Richard and Mick load the bodies into bags, shooting at the Eeslictix larvae as they wriggled out of the rib cages. Luckily the young wwere far more easy to kill than the adults.

'Um –'

'Don't think I'll let you go without giving me a valid enough reason,' James told her sternly.

'Well. . .' She sighed. 'It's just that – everyone here has a specific job, you know? Susan's settled in really well; she's loving it here. I don't think I fit in. I even froze down in that cellar. I'm no good at anything.' Well, apart from rugby tackling blowfish in alleyways, but that didn't happen every day.

'Do you know what we would have to do if you resigned?' James asked now, his expression neutral.

'You would retcon me,' she replied trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

He nodded. 'You wouldn't be allowed to see Susan again, or any of us. You'll see us in the street, and we'll be familiar, but you won't know us. You'll be beyond the fence, inside the safe little bubble humanity has made for itself. And if you do happen to remember, and come looking, we will have no choice but to – to make sure you keep your silence.' An ominous note had crept in, and Anne had no trouble whatsoever in imagining what ruthless Torchwood would do. 'Do you really want the last two months of your life to be permanently erased?'

'They won't have existed.'

James stood abruptly, then stood, still as a statue, trying to control his temper. His eyes broke abruptly away from Anne's pleading gaze as he stalked back and forth behind his desk.

'No.' The syllable rang with determined authority.

'Why not?' she demanded.

His palms thudded menacingly onto the desk. 'One, because as it is, with you here, Torchwood is stretched to its limit trying to control what comes through our hole in the universe, keeping people safe and our identity secret at the same time. Second, because I believe it would be unfair to make your _best friend_ be obliged to pretend you never existed. And thirdly, because you possess something the others don't have.' He laughed at her defiant glare. 'Reese, Richard and Mick all came through government sources. _You_ are the only one who had the guts and the patience to follow the geography teacher and find out what was happening to those kids.' Finally, he was getting through to her. He took his hands off the desk, a smile brightening his face. 'Besides, Richard tells me you have a way with machines.'

There was what looked like a paperweight on a pile of papers in his inbox. He picked it up and tossed it into her hands. 'Tell me what it is.'

Anne, puzzled, looked at the leaden object. It was roughly circular and uniformly grey, with a crude imprint like a palm across one side of its flat surface. Almost instinctively, she drew her hand gently across the smooth ridges and dips, delighted when it made a noise like a harp.

'It's a musical instrument,' she decided happily. James smiled.

'There are hundreds of things like that down in the cellars that we couldn't identify. As of this day, you are in charge of the archives. I want you to catalogue everything, and anything that isn't on the computer's database, I want you to add to it, got it?'

'Yes sir,' Anne replied, revived now that she had a purpose. Maybe Torchwood wasn't so bad after all.

* * *

You know the procedure - Review!


	6. Sprogs

It's been ages since i've updated anything! Sorry guys,but this time I had too much work for even my good friends Nay and Grace to chivvy me along. This is somewhat of a crack chapter to get back into things, so I hope you enjoy!

And by the way, if there are any words joined together, I apologise. My space bar doesn't work :)

* * *

'Jesus Christ what the hell are you doing!?'

The shout came from the medical area of Torchwood 4, and it was Mick's distinctive, high-pitched holler that had roared out. The rest of the team paid little attention to it. Richard was bored. They all were, to be honest, only his way of amusing himself was not to help Anne in reorganising the archives, but to annoy everyone else. He had probably stuck scalpels up his nose or something.

'You know, James, you should really do something about him,' Reese muttered from his work station. 'He put chilli powder in my coffee this morning.' Across the room, Anne and Susan sniggered. 'It's not funny!'

James quelled the two newbies with a look. Well, almost; they shut up, but couldn't quite hide their grins. They were in the hysterical stage of boredom by this point. There had been very little Rift activity for over a week, and even Anne was starting to tire of cataloguing bits of alien space junk stored about half a mile beneath Newcastle.

'He'll settle down soon. There's a full moon in a few days; he always gets worse before he transforms.' James strode over to Susan's desk and put the file he had been reading in front of her. 'How are you coming along Anne?' he asked.

'I'm confused as to whether I should class 'grfhfj' as a vowel or a consonant,' she replied.

'Vowel.'

Everything went silent again for a while as everyone stared at their computer screens or files in front of them and pretended to be paying attention. Susan was running a tracker program on Torchwood finances. Apparently, their wages were high jacked sums from Fort Knox and the Russian Treasury. A memorandum published by Torchwood One and sent to the other branches stated that this was to reduce strain on the Bank of England and detract from the two biggest threats to Britain. At the pushing of a few select buttons, Torchwood could drain the finances of both countries and bring them to an economic standstill. The thought was scary.

The doors of the medical bay opened with a clang and Mick stormed into the main pyramidal cavern of the Base.

'James, can you please do something about the _child_ currently ruining my work?' she demanded. The arms of her white lab coat were covered in alien gunk halfway to the elbow.

'What do you want me to do?' The boss asked casually.

'I don't know, buy him an ice cream or something! He's childish enough,' she added with contempt.

'Ice cream?' Richard chirped, following behind the medical officer. 'You making a sly hint there, pet?' he leered. The innuendo was clear in his voice. Mick took one disgusted glance and wiped her sleeves on his shirt.

'Yuck!'

'You did deserve it, mate,' James said over Anne, Reese and Susan's roars of laughter.

At that minute something flashed on Susan's screen.

'James, Rift spike in a populated area,' she called out. The atmosphere sobered immediately. Here was a chance for action, a relief from the mundane duties they had carried out for the past week. But also every possibility for danger. There could be no fooling about.

'Details.'

'ASDA in Peterlee. Something came through and there are reports of something inside the supermarket. No casualties yet.'

'Have the police been called out?'

'Not yet.'

'Put a message out that it's a prank, and call the manager to inform them of a gas leak in the area.' Susan nodded while everyone else followed James down to the garage. 'On second thought, Richard, you stay here too.'

'Why?' the weapons expert protested. Apart from James, he had the most experience out of anyone on the team.

'Because there's no way you're going in the car with that smeared over you.' The boss had a point, those alien entrails stunk, and there was no way Reese was going to willingly clean it out of the SUV.

A blatant disregard for traffic laws got the team to Peterlee within the hour. Susan had given them updates on what was happening in the supermarket. The gas leak ploy, one of Torchwood's favourites, had worked well, and both the supermarket and the surrounding shopping centre had been cleared for public safety. Just in case whatever the creature was that had come through got out of hand. They didn't know what they were dealing with, despite the CCTV, so James ordered them all to put on infrared glasses to detect heat. Each one had a camera in the frame that linked back to Susan so she could keep an eye on everything. It was possible they were dealing with some sort of chameleon. The police were there, keeping a perimeter. It was little more than an annoyance.

'Who are you then?' one of the officers asked.

'Specialists,' James replied through the open window of the SUV. He flashed one of Reese's fake Ids at the woman.

'I thought that an electrician or someone would come and fix the pipes,' she said, still suspicious.

'This leak's too big for technicians, at least until we figure out what's causing it. Those guys, you know, they're good at fixing things, but crap at working things out. This could happen again.' James indicated the general area, normally buzzing with shoppers. 'Now would you kindly let us through so we can get on with our work?'

The policewoman drew back, still glaring at the Torchwood SUV, but nodded them through anyway. James didn't so much as glance back.

Once inside the building and out of prying eyes, the Torchwood team drew their guns and split up. They would go through the store systematically, up and down each isle until they found whatever it was that was hiding in there. At least the manager had thought to close the front doors.

It was strangely eerie being in ASDA without people. It was like being in a horror film with zombies about to attack. Anne tried not to think about that as she prowled along the Delhi counter. Ahead, furthest away from the doors, she caught sight of James nearest her, and nodded. All clear.

Something moved in the corner of her eye. A green flash. When she turned there was nothing there.

'Did you see that?' she whispered into the comm.

'No,' Susan replied. 'Let me run it again.' She brought up the footage on a different screen.

'Getting jitters, newbie?' Richard teased.

'I've been here for months, Richard. Besides, at least I'm _here_ getting jitters. I'm not stuck at base stinking of tritovore guts.'

'That was low, Miss Prince.' Richard said nothing more. The flash of whatever it was had appeared on Susan's playback, but only for a frame. Whatever it was, it was fast. The team needed their wits about them.

Mick was stalking down the meat aisle, sweeping her gaze to both sides with her firearm pointed with her vision. Half way down she spotted something that made her heart rate increase.

'Guys, we've got a problem.' There on the floor was a packet of fillet steaks, ripped open and gnawed by something. Whatever they were hunting, it was carnivorous.

A small trail of blood from the creature's meal wound away around the corner of the refrigeration units. 'Everyone converge on aisles ten and eleven.'

There was something hiding behind the cheese, James could see it. As he came closer, it hissed at him, definitely a reptilian sound. For a second the thing shifted, and he caught a glint of green scales.

'Reese, it looks like we've got a sprog. Bring the tranquiliser from the car.' James watched the creature for a few seconds, judging what it would do next. 'You're all right, little one. You're going to be fine. You're going to love where you're going. Just don't make it hard for us.' The lizard, whatever it was, obviously didn't trust the gentle tone in James' voice. Faster than blinking it snapped out from the shelf, scattering mature cheddar all over the floor. It sprinted off on all fours, a long tail lashing behind it like a whip as it turned the corner.

'Sprog loose! Heading towards the Dehli!' James shouted. 'Take the glasses off, you don't need them. And Reese get back here pronto. Don't let it get out or we'll never catch it.'

Back at Base, Richard was getting very excited. Sprog hunts were always fun.

'Fun?' Susan demanded.

'They're harmless really,' Richard assured her, his eyes glued to the screen as four cameras watched the scene unfold. 'Well, the one's we've seen before are. They evolve really fast. That one might be poisonous.' Susan was revolted by the glee in his voice, and very little reassured when he said that the only poison Mick hadn't been able to find antivenin for was a werewolf bite.

Reese had got the tranquilisers from the SUV and was now trying to catch up with the rest of the team. They tried herding it towards him, but sprogs were rather good at climbing, so they couldn't afford to corner it or it would leap away and they had to start again. And the little blighter was fast. The four of them could barely keep up with it.

Eventually, panting, the team came together in the middle of the store.

'I think we need to try a different tactic,' Anne gasped, clutching the stitch in her side. 'God, that thing's quick.'

'What if we lured it out with something?' Mick suggested. 'Then Reese lies in wait to shoot it?'

'What with though?' The boss looked doubtful.

'There's eggs down the bottom there,' Anne suggested.

'It might be clever enough to suspect a trap, and there's all the other food around,' Reese put in. He looked rather like Bruce Willis with the tranquiliser gun slung over his shoulder.

'Then we patrol those food aisles,' James decided. 'It's scared of us so it'll stay away. And if the others are anything to go by, it'll get hungry quickly. This is the best idea we've got. Well done Mick.'

It took two hours to catch the sprog. James, Mick and Anne made sure it didn't come anywhere near the meat or cheese while Reese perched upon the ice cream freezers with a good shot at the pile of smashed eggs below him. Eventually the green lizard was spotted coming from the left. It stayed close to the protection of the shelves, looking about with big, yellow, cat-like eyes. It was about the same height as a cat too, but at least three times as long, its long tails lashing back and forth in caution. A red fan appeared on its spine as it checked for danger. That characteristic was new. If Reese moved now, they would never catch it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the sprog inched its way towards the eggs, its claws clicking on the shiny floor. A forked tongue flicked out. It was almost –

The dart hit it on the shoulder, and with a sharp cry of surprise the sprog bounded away, instinctively heading for the safety of somewhere high.

'I got it, Boss,' Reese spoke into his comm.

'That's a sprog? That's what we went to so much trouble to get?' The look on Anne's face was less than impressed. Even less impressed when James told them all they had to clear up.

'We're investigating a gas leak, remember?' he reminded them. 'How will we explain eggs all over the floor and half chewed steaks?'

'Earthquake?' Richard suggested over the comm.

'I have to admit, it is kinda cute,' Anne conceded.

'Well, we have a whole colony of them, or Reese does anyway,' James answered. 'And that's just where this one's going.' The sprog in question was stowed safely in the boot of the SUV, and starting to come around. It wouldn't hate being in there too much, and it wouldn't become fully awake for several hours yet.

'Why?'

Mick turned round from the front passenger seat. 'I like to study their evolution – within a single generation they can become completely different species.'

'And they have very advanced vocalisation,' Reese added.

There was a small groan from behind the metal grille in the boot. The sprog was waking up.

'How did it get the name sprog anyway?' Susan asked over the comm.

'Richard got there first,' James answered dryly.

* * *

I really am not good at ening chapters, but aside from that, if anyone has any comments, they would make me more than happy!


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